It's not 1986..Stop thinking that way. It's all about outputs, not inputs.

How many organizations have you ever been a part of where the powers that lead the organization said: “I don’t want growth, financial gains, or new customers”?? How many leaders say “Our system is broken, and I want to keep it that way?” Me, personally, have never been a part of an organization where the goal was stagnation and failure.

This being said, most organizations live with stagnation and even failure to a point, where year over year revenue growth isn’t great. Why do they tolerate such predictable poor performance?? Why are companies settling for mediocracy, blaming outside factors as opposed to the fact that perhaps their sales efforts are flawed? Here is why….They use archaic mechanisms to drive their sales teams!!

If you are doing these things, STOP IMMEDIATELY.

1.      Tracking Dials. Dial counting is the worst, and least predictable behavior for any sales organization. Basic, thoughtless theory states that more dials equates to more money….FALSE!! Quality contacts, utilizing research, learnings and data drive revenue. I would MUCH rather have one of my reps make 5 dials, and close 3 deals over making 60 calls to close 1.

2.      Tracking Talk Time. Please see the first bullet point here….Talk time is a meaningless stat that often means you talk too much, listen too little, offer little in terms of research, and more often than not worry about small talk. I’ve seen more reps than I can count believe that engaging in long, drawn out conversations was the building blocks of relationship building. These same reps. couldn’t tell me the underlying, unimplied needs of those prospects. There wasn’t value created, and more often than not the reps were the speakers instead of the listeners.

3.      Placing inputs over outputs. STOP, STOP STOP!! Outputs are the result of intelligent, efficient work, and KPI’s need to be built on how to maximize outputs. This is a sales engine, and needs to be treated like it. Worrying about “activity” metrics shows zero understanding of how to sell, a sales process or growth initiatives. Measuring is crucial in all sales functions, whether it be an SDR function, AE Function, or an Account Manager function, but activity measurements for input capturing is a colossal waste of time, forces bad behaviors, and generates little to no revenue, thus stunting growth.

Okay…Now we see what is the problem with ineffective sales organizations, let’s bring about the KPI’s that matter. These are what need to be measured and adjusted to drive revenue in a real way.

1.      Quota Attainment

2.      Gross Margin

3.      Close Rate

4.      Speed to Lead

5.      Sales Cycle Length

6.      Booked Meetings vs. Qualified Meetings

Outputs are everything within a sales organization. Processes need to be built to protect the sales team from doing anything other than closing business, and driving revenue in a meaningful way. If you place your sales team secondary, force archaic activity based metrics, and believe inputs are more important than outputs, please pray that your competition is archaic, unskilled and lacks sales acumen, or you could be in trouble. Sales driven organizations need to be forward thinking, and work towards KPI’s that create efficiency around opportunities to close business, and acquire new customers.